Importing Address Book Backup file [.abbu]

Hi
I just wondered if anyone has ever imported from a .abbu file successfully?
I have an iMac and an old Powerbook, and have to update the contacts in Address Book on my Powerbook when I go on a trip. So I make Backup files from Address Book on my iMac just before I go away. I also export as VCards which gives me 'vCards.vcf', and finally I simply choose Select All and drag all the contacts over to the folder i'm backing up into – which gives me 'Joe Bloggs and 801 others.vcf'
The reason I use these 3 methods is because I found that when using my Powerbook, whenever I import the .abbu file I end up with a very very old version of my data – even though I only backed up the day before. I have just tried once again, and having had 802 contacts on my iMac, when I import the .abbu file I end up with 700.
So I'm having to load in a batch VCF file, which is a solution of sorts but doesn't include my Groups of course. It is concerning that these Address Book Backup files don't seem to be complete back ups at all.
Is anyone else aware of this?

however, if it was an OS difference issue, why would it only import some of the contacts?
That, I'm not sure of; possibly because there was no change in 102 of them, so it may have ignored those. It's also possible the backup was somehow corrupted in those particular records. So many possibilities, so little time to test them all.
But the .abbu contains a lot more than just your contacts; it's a really a package, just like any application, so you can open it and see what else is in there, too. I've restored from both before and I've never had a problem, but I use the Export to vCard format most often, just to be sure I don't run into problem with changes in later or previous versions of Address Book.

Similar Messages

Can't import address book backup...

Hi,
I used to have 10.5 installed on my computer but it was very slow... So I decided to make a clean install of 10.4.
I backed up my address book contacts from 10.5 but when I try to import them back to 10.4 nothing happens and the computer plays the default alert sound.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,

Thanks BDAqua...
Sorry for not responding earlier, I supposedly configured my forum account so it would let me know if someone posted something on my question, yet I didn't received any notification about this... Maybe it ended up in my spam folder.
The scenario is this:
I had 10.5 and used the backup address book function... It created a file with a .ABBU file with the name Address Book 2008-04-05 and 1.2 Mb of size.
Then back in 10.4 the Mac recognized the .ABBU file and displays the address book icon on it... When I double click it, Address Book App opens and warns me that I'm about to replace the contents of my Address Book with the contents of the Backup. I click OK and it does nothing but to play the default alert sound.
Recently I opened the backup file in a friends computer using 10.5 and it opens and restores the contacts just fine, the problem is that I want my computer to have them in order to put them in my iPhone and be able to use them in Mail.
So, other that upgrading again to 10.5 (that is a no-go since my laptop is dreadfully slow on it) and opening my backup file on a 10.5 machine, export each and every one of my 150+ plus contacts as VCards and then reimporting them back to 10.4, is there any other way to get this working?
Thanks!

Address Book backup file seems to be corrupted

I have a backup Address Book file on and external hard drive that seems to be corrupted. I am getting messages like this when I restore from backup:
2008-09-26 06:47:11.655 Address Book[296] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
/Applications/Address Book.app/Contents/Resources/Aqua2RemovePressed.tif
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
Error in createMutableDictionaryValue:1012 for property 'Email' 'XML parser error:
Unexpected character 9 at line 1
Old-style plist parser error:
Unexpected ';' or '=' after key at line 1
I've restored and trash the file twice and the message doesn't point to the same tiff file. I think it has to do with the xml metadata format. I don't know much about metadata repairs or even much about the protocol for it.
Any ideas on how to repair my backup file? (I have over 2,000) contacts and retyping them all would be rather time consuming)

I'm not convinced there's anything wrong with the backup file, since the error message points to a tiff file, and a different one each time you trash it or restore it. But if the file is just an AddressBook.data file, you should be able to copy it from the hard drive to Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (after you rename the one that's already there to AddressBook.bak, and after you quit Address Book). Then restart AddressBook and see if that restores your contacts.
Mulder

Problems with Reverting to an Address Book Backup

I keep my address book updated on my iMac at home that is running OS v10.6 Snow Leopard. At work, I am now using a G5 that is running OS v10.4 Tiger. I have created a +Backup of my Address Book+ at home and brought the .abbu file with me to work so that I could +Revert to an Address Book Backup+ on my G5.
I've done it twice already and I'm still missing vCards (mostly recently added). Also, some of the other vCards have old information. Is there something I'm not doing right? If the solution is to highlight all vCards and +Export vCard...+ then what is the point of +Back up Address Book...+

Dear Pat,
Thank you. I have received the exact same reply from Amreso.
I thank you both for your replies. If the problem occurs again, I shall follow your advice.
I just need to pluck up the courage. I get so nervous with the computer when it plays up.
Regards
Anthony
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:11:29 -0700
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Problems with reverting to an earlier version
    Re: Problems with reverting to an earlier version
    created by Pat Willener in Installing Flash Player - View the full discussion
This is a public forum; please do not post your email address (by sending the entire forum notification message with all its headers back to the forum).
     Please note that the Adobe Forums do not accept email attachments. If you want to embed a screen image in your message please visit the thread in the forum to embed the image at http://forums.adobe.com/message/5250122#5250122
     Replies to this message go to everyone subscribed to this thread, not directly to the person who posted the message. To post a reply, either reply to this email or visit the message page: http://forums.adobe.com/message/5250122#5250122
     To unsubscribe from this thread, please visit the message page at http://forums.adobe.com/message/5250122#5250122. In the Actions box on the right, click the Stop Email Notifications link.
     Start a new discussion in Installing Flash Player by email or at Adobe Community
For more information about maintaining your forum email notifications please go to http://forums.adobe.com/message/2936746#2936746.

Address Book Backup

How can I backup Address now? The File>Backup option is not available. I tried to file>export>address book archive, but when trying to restore the archive, only the first 'library' entry appears, all the others are gone. Also after this restore, when I quit the programme and re-open it, all the contacts are intact, as the restoration never happened (its not the list of the archive).
Please advice

file->export->address book archive should work. however, when you import an address book archive it wipes out the existing data (or so i understand). something is wrong with your address book data. you might want to rebuild it.
another easy way to back up your address book is to select all your contacts and drag them to the desktop. this save the data in vcard format which can be easily imported into various email programs, not just address book.
P.S. to rebuild your address book, quit address book and Mail and trash the file homedirectory/library/application support/address book/AddressBook-v22.abcddb and start address book. that file will be rebuilt from metadata and this will hopefully fix your export/import issues.
Message was edited by: V.K.

How do i erase a corrupt contact list from iCloud,iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro and restore Address Book backup to all devices and cloud?

how do i erase a corrupt contact list from iCloud,iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro and restore Address Book backup to all devices and cloud?
I saved a corrected, most up to date version of my master Address Book Contacts as a back-up on my Mac Book Pro.
then in an effort to "simplify my life" i attempted to sync my I phone contacts - ( pre clean-up version) with my clean list on Mac Book Pro, New I pad and newly available icloud. DUH!! Using iTunes to do the sync caused the clean MacBOOK Pro list to be commingled with the dirty iphone contacts. amd now the whole mess is in the cloud.
I need to clear out the contaminated lists from all iplaces, and startover with Back-up on my macbook pro. BUT HOW???
Help
Karen

I had exported an address book backup: abbu
so since i wrote, i have found my way into the cloud: selected all entries - deleted them all from the cloud.
This wiped out contacts on my iphone and i pad, and MBP, as well as on the cloud. I then imported the abbu back into my now empty address book.
To repopulate the crowd, i selected all in my address book and created a single card vCard for export to my desktop. I then dragged that vcard into my empty cloud. Now my cloud has the same clean contacts as my MBP addressbook. The cloud then pushed the clean contacts into my empty ipad and iphone contacts.
I had to go back to Address Book>preferences>Accounts and Add an I cloud account - but if you accidentally create a second i cloud account - all of a sudden your address book will duplicate itself. I quickly reversed it by deleting one of the icloud accounts in my Address Book>preferences>Accounts.
I created a new entry on my MBP and it is now on all devices and in cloud
I also created a new entry on my iPhone and it is now in the address book on my MBP.
I feel empowered!!
Have i missed anything??

Importing Address Book From An Older Version To Leopard

I'm trying to import my address book from my old, G3 iMac running 10.1.5 to my new machine. All my address cards show the .vcf file extension, yet I can't import them. I get an error message that says, "No importable cards found". I tried switching from .vcf version 3.0 to 2.1 with no luck. I tried importing them as a text file, still doesn't work.
Any ideas on how I can import my addresses?

I was able to solve my problem with the help of a friend.
I found the Old Address Book database file under OS 10.1.5:
Users->myusername->Library->Addresses->Address Book.addressbook
I pasted Address Book.addressbook to the new Address Book running under OS 10.5 in:
Users->myusername->Application Support->AddressBook
The computer did a little conversion dance and everything appeared just fine.
Hope this helps others.

Lost address book, found file named AddressBook.data.previous

My address book is gone. I found AddressBook.data.previous in Application Support under my account, but I can't open it and can't drag it to the Application. Any help? Is this my missing data?
Best to all.

With the Address Book application quit and using the Finder go to Home > Library > Application Support > AddressBook > AddressBook.data.previous.
If there is an Address Book.data file, move this to the Desktop. Change the name of AddressBook.data.previoius to AddressBook.data
Say a quick prayer of cross your fingers and launch Address Book.
If your contacts are not available, now is the time to start maintaining a backup or if you do, start including Address Book data with your backup which is quite easy.
As the menu bar, go to File and select Back Up Address Book. The default name for the backup file is Address Book - (and the date). A very easy process.
If you need to recover all contacts from this backup, at the menu bar go to File and select Revert to Address Book Backup selecting the backup file.
Before making a large number changes/edits, deletions or additions to existing data, update your backup file immediately beforehand.

Imported Address Book not linking - when typing, results are red

OS - Windows Vista
Thunderbird Version 24.6.6
Issue: Address book was imported into Mozilla from Windows Live Mail 2006. When trying to send an email, even though the contacts are listed in the address book, when typing them out in a new email, they are still flashing up in red.
Troubleshooting performed: Composed new mail, typed out email manually - this added to address book. There were four copies of the address book listed, deleted the duplicates and migrated the addresses from the imported book to Personal Address Book. Still not working. Opened Address book and selected contact, attempted to compose mail to selected contact, failed. Checked Address Book entries - found that the entries didn't import properly into the following fields:
First, Last, Email - rather they got imported as Display Name, Nickname (with nickname being the email address)
Solution: Went into each contact, and modified them by moving the 'nickname' (which contained the email address) to the 'email address' field. Now able to send emails through to the contact.
Questions:
1) When importing the Address from Windows Live Mail - how can we stop it from importing/mapping the email address field into the nickname field?
2) Is there a faster way to update all the contacts to copy across from Nickname field to the Email field?
Thanks,
Angela

If you import via CSV fie, you should be shown a dialog that asks you to re-sort address book fields so the fields in the imported address book correspond with those in Thunderbird's Address Book.
Did this not happen?
See "From somewhere else to Thunderbird:" here:
http://www.ramsden.org.uk/11_Thunderbird_Settings_and_the_Profile.html
I don't know of any easy way to work directly with the address book file itself; it's not organized in a user-friendly manner internally. These matters are usually best addressed either before importing (i.e. tweak the CSV file in a spreadsheet program) or via the import dialog.
Alternative formats such as vcf or vCard may avoid the need to massage the data, but IMHO are less suited to managing address books. If you can use these formats, this add-on can be useful:
https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html

Can I import address book info from mac 10.5 to 10.7

Can I import address book info from Mac 10.5 to 10.7? It tells me "You can't use this version of the application Address Book with this version of Mac OS X. You have Address Book 4.0.6."

The Apple Support Communities are an international user to user technical support forum. As a man from Mexico my first language is Spanish. I do not speak English, however I do write in English with the aid of the Mac OS X spelling and grammar checks. I also live in a culture perhaps very very different from your own. When offering advice in the ASC, my comments are not meant to be anything more than helpful and certainly not to be taken as insults.
Try moving just the folder at Mac HD/users/~/Library/Application Support/Address Book from 10.5 to the same location in 10.7.
Or in Address Book on the old Mac go to the File menu and choose Export Contacts Archive, copy that file to the new Mac and in Address Book on the new Mac go to File menu Import, browse to the archive file on the new Mac and choose it.

Problem with importing saved .json backup file in fresh installed firefox 3.6.8? Message "unable to process the backup file", when i choosed option "Restore" from menu "organize your bookmarks" !?

Hello,
my problem is with importing saved .json backup file in fresh installed firefox 3.6.8? Message "unable to process the backup file", when i choosed option "Restore" from menu "organize your bookmarks" !?
Normally that i followed all instructions from your support site, and that i tried many things, but nothing helped :( !?
my .json file isn't corrupted cause it was saved on another partition before formatting my OS.
Please don't tell me that my bookmarks are lost :( cause i had many important things in that bookmarks, on 100.s pages :( ....
Thanks in advance!
Sincerely,
hoho33

"
Can you restore that JSON backup in a new profile?
Did you make sure that it is really a JSON backup and that there is no missing or hidden other file extension?
A JSON backup starts with: {"title":"","id":1,"dateAdded"
A HTML backup starts with: <!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>
You can try if you can restore that JSON backup in a new profile.
Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems
See Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile
If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile (be careful not to copy corrupted files)
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox
Please for administration of this support site, make possibility to quote someone's answer, on this way is dificult to answer somebody who wrote some suggestion!
No, i can't restore JSON backup in new profile, even on fresh installed OS XP SP3, with fresh installation of latest version of firefox!
MAN I TOLD YOU 10X IT'S 200 % JSON BACKUP FILE!!! I'M NOT IN IT FROM YESTERDAY, I WORK IN IT 12 YEARS!!!
I tried restoring json backup in new profile, but nothing, i couldn't restore, cause that stupid error from screen shot which i posted again appears !
Man i'm not totally noob i repeat 2nd time here, and normally that i know to create new profile, and that i tried that, but that didn't help!
I can't believe that FIREFOX has not good support team, and doesn't care for yours users, this will not give me more reason to use in future firefox
like borwser, if i don't have good support, and when i have problem like this, to loose all my very important bookmarks and passwords on them, and
firefox support won't to help me to solve my problem!
If somebody from firefox support team read this, i can give you Remote desktop access to my computer to try solve this problem, like other serious company
like HP, Dell , etc. give remote desktop support to their users!
Corel are you from firefox support team? Please don't write same suggestions, cause i know to read, and i understand well if you write once some suggestion!
Greetzz

Upgrading to V4 has lost all of my Bookmarks, I still have the restore files in my profile data but they will not load, I have tried importing the html backup file too but it didn't work either. How can I get them back?

Upgrading to V4 has lost all of my Bookmarks, I still have the restore files in my profile data but they will not load, I have tried importing the html backup file too but it didn't work either. How can I get them back?

Ok this is bizzare!
Thank you for your response, I went throught each and every step without any luck, even got the recovery programme, and painstakingly tried to sift through all that mumbojumbo to find what i needed. finally found the bookmark bit, but it had been fully overwritten :(, so on reading about previous ff versions, found the sqlite thingys, and they were relatively unscathed(partly written over, but saveable apparently TG), saved them to adiff drive, amongst other possibly good folders. Then looked up how to install them, and it said to close FF, and install to profile folder.
So i tried to close FF, and the original problem from a few days ago, where it asked me if 'i was sure i wanted to close this window as it has X tabs open', popped up again. This is where 'open blank page' selection was set, over 'open previous tabs'. Wanting to save that info on how to sort out these friggin files, I reset the Option to 'open previous tabs', and closed FF. After unsucessfully searching for the profile folder on my laptop, i opened FF intending to search online for where i could find said folder.
AND BANG, surprise surprise, the FF I had just closed with only tabs open about finding out what the heck to do, had disappeared, and instead my original saved tabs were up, and my bookmarks are there..... I am gobsmacked! what the heck just happened there???
I have made 3 back up in different folders now, of those friggin bookmarks. I am weary now tho of shutting it all down.... what if its back to the other pages I had with no bookmarks, tomorrow :(

How Do I Make Import Address Book Archive Work Properly?

I have several address books archived. I have one for Christmas cards, I have another for my neighborhood watch program and others that I use at various times. Some of the archives were made using Tiger and some I have created in Leopard. When I Export an Address Book Archive it does so without a problem. When I Import one of my Address Book Archives, to replace whatever address book is currently located in Address Book, the import does not work. Once I try to import, I must quit Address Book then reopen it and I still have the Address Book resident that I was trying to replace. The only way I have found to replace the resident address book is to first archive the current book for the sake of having it backed up, then delete all the names in the book by selecting all then deleting by hitting the delete key or by selecting Delete Cards using the Menu. After the names are deleted, then Importing an archive works fine.
Is anyone else having this problem or possibly have a solution to making Address Book work properly without having to delete all the current names before Importing an archive?
Information: I have deleted the Address Book Folder located within the Home/Library/Application Support folders and rebuilt it under Leopard OS and then pasted the names that were resident before deleting the folders. So far, I still cannot get the Import Address Book Archive function to work properly. Thanks in advance for any helpful information or hints.

Ok! Hmm... I indeed have tried to import an archive, did get the message, replaced all and had it working fine for me so it should for you I would think.
Have you tried to log in your computer as a different user, launch AB and try to toggle back and forth between archives to see if you experience the same issue? If not, then it is a user specific issue, if yes, then it may be more a case of app/system issue.
If you are able to overwrite in AB under a different user, then I would suggest you log in back to your main user and repair permissions (applications/utilities/disk utility repair permissions.
As for your use of AB and different archives, I am sure no one is bothered by that. We are all users here trying to learn and/or help others. I would only point out that if you cannot find a solution to your problem, you may want to consider working with AB in a different manner than you have in the past and by your description of usage groups and smart groups will more than handle your contacts while avoiding mixing apples and doughnuts - but I am sure you have thought of that already !!
hope this helps

Can I import epub books or files to my iPad from my iMac?

can I import epub books or files to my iPad from my iMac? I have written some documents and converted them to epub using calibre, can I imort them from my iMac to my iPad?

Yes. If compatible you should be able to import them to iBooks.

Imported address book contains six copies of each address

I imported my Outlook Express address book (Address Book.WAB) into TB, but now I have six copies of each address in the imported address book. Deleting the imported address book and importing again only adds another copy of each address. How can I eliminate all the extra copies of each address?

Gosh, after three days cannot anyone tell me how to (COMPLETELY) delete my imported address book so I can start fresh? Each time I think I have deleted my imported address book, I try to import again and the book contains one additional copy of each address. I am up to six copies at present. It seem apparent to me that each time I am not successfully deleting the imported address book

Importing Address Book Backup file [.abbu]

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for